高考英语阅读社会现象类巩固训练

阅读强化训练 （一） Did you hear what happened at yesterday’s meeting? Can you believe it? If you find those sorts of quietly whispered questions about your co-workers irresistible, you’re hardly alone. But why are we drawn to gossip? A new study suggests it’s because the rumors are all about us. “Gossip receivers tend to use positive and negative group information to improve, promote, and protect the self,” writes a research team, led by Elena Martinescu of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. In the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the researchers described two experiments testing the personal value gossip receivers get. The first featured 178 university undergraduates, who had all previously worked on at least one course assignment with a group of four or more students. Participants were asked to recall and write a short description of an incident, in which a group member shared with them either positive or negative information about another group member’s secr